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The Great War

After helping to kill the Red Baron 100 years ago, a Canadian hero finally gets his due While there’s some debate over who dealt the final blow to the infamous First World War ace, Canadian fighter pilot Arthur Roy Brown is being recognized for his service and legacy. Canada’s most fascinating military relic stands sentinel…

Turkey has its flying legend in the form of Sabiha Gökçen, a young woman who was “found” by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself, but whose origins remain obscure. Some claim she was a Turkish orphan of the Great War, others that she was an Armenian orphan. Ataturk is said to have adopted her on one…

A centennial salute to courageous, controversial Billy Bishop March 1917: The First World War I has been grinding on for 31 long months, more than 2 million Allied soldiers are dead, and no end to the carnage is in sight. Manned flight – a new and romantic phenomenon when the war began-has evolved from a…

At the beginning of the First World War, aircraft were frail machines, unarmed and suitable only for reconnaissance duties. By its end, pilots in swift, heavily armed fighters were shooting each other out of the sky over the Western Front, bombers were showering high-explosive and incendiary bombs on battlefield and town alike; the first dive…

Some comments by Elliot White Springs, an American fighter ace of the Great War (WWI): The heavens were the grandstand and only the gods were spectators. The stake was the world and the game had no recess. It was the most dangerous of all sports and the most fascinating. It got in the blood like…